What do you think of Moore Catholic's decision to leave the CHSFL?

Moore Catholic head football coach Greg Rocco, in white shirt, has decided to pull the team out of the CHSFL for 2009 and play an independent schedule. (Staten Island Advance file photo by Frank J. Johns)

There had been rumblings about Moore Catholic leaning towards leaving the Catholic High School Football League and playing an independent schedule in 2009 and it looks like that is rumor is actually true.

"This was a feeling that the way football was going at Moore, it was going by the wayside or we were going to have to make a radical change," Rocco told the Advance.

Moore has hit a rough patch of late, going 6-33 over the last four seasons, a drastic drop from the program's meteoric rise to the CHSFL AA championship in 2004, which was led by Nick Doscher and Vidal Hazelton.

The reason for the move seemed simple enough: The schedule was too hard.

The move was one that Rocco had been considering for some time. The Mavericks were one of five CHSFL A teams, so half of their schedule was made up of AA teams. When Rocco received the 2009 league schedule in December and saw that it included the top three AA teams from 2008, he began to plan for an independent slate.

"The Catholic league wanted us to play Xavier, St. Peter's, St. John the Baptist right in a row," said Rocco. "It just led to the point of what are we asking these kids to do? We're asking them to come and play mismatched games. It wasn't fair to them. If we had to play Xavier one time or St. Peter's one time, we could do that. But to play them all back to back was too much."

Athletic director Rich Postiglione said that the CHSFL was "cool" with the school's decision to pull out of the league and said that another reason for wanting to take a step back from the CHSFL was the school's relatively small number of male students.

"We want to make sure that we sustain the program," said Postiglione "The small boys population (in the school), there's not great numbers. We felt that something different and exciting -- an independent schedule would be best for the growth of the program and the future."

Rocco said that he expects to be met with some resistance from the borough's football establishment, but went on to say that he hopes that they'll be able to prove the doubters wrong.

As for the options available to the program, they are able to return the CHSFL, or any other private league, or they could continue to play an independent schedule while trying to succeed and improve the program's stature on Staten Island.

"My feeling is that if we are more successful I think that draws kids in itself," Rocco said. "When they see Moore getting crushed every week -- I think that's a detriment."

So we want to know what you think about the move. Visit our high school homepage to vote in the poll (it's right there on the right), leave a comment here or do both.